By Deborah Gyapong
Canadian Catholic News
OTTAWA
Anti-euthanasia protesters stand outside the B.C. Supreme Courthouse, June 15, minutes after Justice Lynn Smith ruled in favour of a coalition of pro-physician-assisted suicide plaintiffs. Nathan Rumohr / The B.C. Catholic.
Bishops and others have expressed dismay over a June 15 B.C. Supreme Court decision to strike down Criminal Code provisions against euthanasia and assisted suicide.

"I strongly urge the government to appeal this extremely flawed and dangerous ruling," said Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, of Vancouver in a statement released the day of the decision.

The government has until July 16 to file a notice of appeal.

"We are currently reviewing the court's 395-page decision," said Julie Di Mambro, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson's press secretary, in an email. "This is an emotional and divisive issue for many Canadians. Parliament voted as recently as April 2010 not to change these laws."

She noted the court had "suspended the operation of its declaration for a one-year period," thus giving Parliament a chance to revisit the legislation.

"Being stewards of life also requires each of us and all society to respond to the physical, emotional, and moral sufferings of people of all ages, particularly those seriously ill or handicapped," Archbishop Richard Smith of Edmonton, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a June 18 statement.

"Do we show concern for the sick, the elderly, the handicapped and vulnerable, by encouraging them to commit suicide or through deliberately killing them by euthanasia, or instead, do we fashion a culture of life and love in which each person, at every moment and in all circumstances of their natural lifespan, is treasured as a gift?"

Justice Lynn Smith struck down the law preventing assisted suicide and euthanasia as unconstitutional on Charter grounds. In a 395-page decision, Smith said the laws violate the Charter's protections of life, liberty, and security under section 7.

She also wrote the law violates the Charter's equality provisions in section 15, since it is legal to commit suicide, but the key plaintiff in the case, Gloria Taylor, 64, has Lou Gehrig's Disease, ALS, and could not commit suicide without assistance.

Archbishop Miller said the decision "reflects a distorted view of equality rights that emphasizes autonomy over human dignity and the value of life."

"True liberty means the freedom to live one's life secure in the knowledge that those who care for us are dedicated to the service of life, not the taking of life," he said. "We have been down this road many times around the world, and all the safeguards initially put in place wind up either disregarded or eventually dispensed with."

"The result is euthanasia harms not only those whose lives are taken, but those responsible for taking them," he said.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) also called for the decision to be appealed. Executive director Alex Schadenberg noted that parliament in 2010 had overwhelmingly defeated Bill C-384, which proposed allowing euthanasia and assisted suicide. "Today's court decision is fundamentally at odds with the will of parliament as expressed just months ago," he said.

"The prohibition of physician-assisted suicide upholds the dignity of each human person, regardless of disability," said Joanne McGarry, executive director of the Catholic Civil Rights League.

"The Court has ignored the existing precedent of the Supreme Court of Canada, from the Rodriguez decision from 1993," she said. "The Court's ruling has trivialized the serious concerns about the impact of the liberalization of assisted suicide laws, and the impact on those with severe or costly disabilities to make use of that option."

McGarry also warned about the dangers to the conscientious rights of physicians who may be approached to carry out assisted suicide requests should the decision stand.

EPC-BC representative Dr. Williard Johnston said the court's decision "would point Canada towards the Oregon assisted suicide regime, which has become notorious for its erosion of medical standards and abuse of psychiatry to rubber-stamp suicide requests."

"If accepted, this ruling today places people who are already in a disadvantaged situation due to their health limitations in a drastically more vulnerable position," said LifeCanada executive director Natalie Hudson Sonnen. "We do no service to Canadians by placing even more power into the hands of doctors to make life and death decisions. Elder abuse and poor suicide prevention are already a huge concern in Canada. We should be providing Canadians with more protection, not opening the doors to killing people."

Sonnen warned the ruling "if upheld, will forever change the doctor/patient relationship, risk serious erosion to medical standards, and place the lives of all Canadians at the mercy of the shifting sands of the medical establishment."

"Taking away these protections will only increase the potential for poor decision making, and pressure vulnerable patients to end their lives prematurely," she said. "This is certainly the wrong direction in health care. We need instead to affirm and improve the positive ways to help patients that are already available, such as palliative care to alleviate suffering and the right to refuse unnecessary treatment, that do not jeopardize their lives."

The Christian Legal Fellowship (CLF) had asked the B.C. Supreme Court to "respect the role of Parliament in a democracy"; and "recognize the court is not well-suited to determine what it will mean to allow persons to choose to be killed."

"As acknowledged in several leading cases, human life, not death, must be respected and safeguarded at law," said Ruth Ross, executive director and general legal counsel.

"Nearly every expert body over the past 50 years that has considered the evidence has come to the same conclusion: legalizing euthanasia is not a risk that we should take," said Bradley Miller of Miller Thomson LLP, who assisted CLF in the case. "This is not primarily a legal question; it's a moral one, and it belongs to all of us."

"This is too important a matter to be left to a single judge, or even a panel of judges," he said. "This is a matter for broad public consultation and parliamentary resolution. Decisions of life and death that affect all Canadians deserve measured analysis by our community, by our learned experts, and by our elected representatives."